DAD FACES MURDER CHARGE IN ABUSE CASE

Boy died bedridden in 2011, six years after suffering severe brain injuries as an infant

San Diego 
A murder charge has been filed against the biological father of a Ramona boy who investigators say suffered severe brain injuries as an infant and later died as a blind and bedridden 6-year-old.

Authorities said the 2011 death of Samuel Dahlke — renamed by his adoptive parents — stemmed from the abuse he endured at the hands of Billy Joe Stringfield II just six weeks after birth.

Stringfield, 30, who also uses the last name Springfield, was arrested on a $1 million warrant and pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, assault on a child and involuntary manslaughter at a San Diego Superior Court arraignment on Sept. 30. He has been released from jail on $250,000 bail.

Paramedics were called to Stringfield’s Golden Hill apartment in 2005 and found the baby gray and unresponsive, according to an affidavit supporting the arrest warrant.

Stringfield, who was enlisted in the Navy, told them the baby had fallen a week earlier, and had started acting “all retarded” upon putting him in his crib.

The paramedics noticed that Stringfield and his wife seemed “unnaturally calm and unemotional,” and later declined a doctor’s recommendation to follow their son to the pediatric intensive care unit at the San Diego Naval Medical Center in Balboa Park, the court records state.

The baby suffered from extensive retinol hemorrhaging, continuous seizing and bleeding on the brain.

Upon further questioning by San Diego police, Stringfield blamed the injuries on possibly handling him too hard, shaking him and picking him up from the crib too roughly, the affidavit said.

The baby underwent several surgeries so he could survive off life-support, although the boy would never see, hear, walk, talk or eat ever again. He was placed in a foster home equipped to handle a medically fragile child that year under the care of the Dahlke family, who later adopted him.

Samuel required 24-hour care, including a machine that suctioned saliva out of his lungs and a liquid diet fed through a tube.

He was found dead in his bedroom on Nov. 29, 2011.

Stringfield has already been prosecuted for the abuse. A jury in 2006 found him not guilty of a felony charge but convicted him of misdemeanor child abuse.

He was put on probation and moved to Houston.

He told a psychologist at the time that he was in shock when the paramedics came to the home, explaining why he didn’t show much emotion, according to court records. He also said he felt hospital staff didn’t properly treat his son during an earlier visit for a fall injury, and that he was being used as a scapegoat.